Okay, that's a song title. But lyrics are just poems set to music and it's National Poetry Month. This got me thinking about all the poems that mention food, and there are oh so many of them. My first exposure to food poetry was this little treasure my Grandfather taught me:
I eat my peas with honey
I've done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny
But it keeps them on my knife
As a young child I found this very entertaining and it was, I believe, my first memorized poem. More food poems began to find their way into my life from Shel Silverstein's Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout to Lewis Carroll's The Walrus and The Carpenter or Turtle Soup. These were followed by Robert Frost's Blueberries, Victor Buono's The Fat Man's Prayer, Ogden Nash's The Clean Platter, and Jack Prelutsky's Deep In Our Refrigerator. There's also Pablo Neruda's offerings, Ode to an Onion and Ode to Salt.
And more and more and more, the list goes on. Food is such an elemental part of our life that it is no wonder that so many poems have been written about it.
So take a moment to read or write a poem about food. I'd love it if you'd share your favorites in the comments below.
